"I want us to talk to Alexander."
"No!" Gabriel jerked upright. "Yes. It's time."
"I'm not going, Frankie. He will not have forgiven me for Melissa. I can't do it."
"Yes, you can." She paused and repeated again. "It's time."
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
She had been practically beheaded. Around her neck shredded tissue, and the great vessels from the heart exposed. The severed trachea white among the clots of blood. Her head was tilted backward but propped against the wall, as though she were lazily keeping watch.
Melissa Cartwright. Beauty queen. Glamour wife of Sir Stephen Cartwright.
Dead eyes should be empty of expression but hers were not. A horrible knowingness was in her gaze. Her left eyelid drooped flirtatiously. As though she couldn't help herself, Gabriel thought. Flirtatious in life. Flirtatious in death.
With a strange sense of detachment he saw that the front of her cream evening dress was soaked. She had bled out. The knobbly sequins of the bodice made the wash of blood look like crimson vomit. Her hands were resting on her lap and tied together with wire; white bone pushing through the slit skin. But she must have put up a fight. Some of her nails had snapped so violently, they had broken off right into the quick. Her long dress was rucked up, exposing her inner thigh.
"She's not wearing knickers," a voice said behind him. One of the detectives, talking to a female colleague.
"Probably didn't have any on to begin with. That tight a dress, you go commando." The female officer was smiling.
"Still looks like a sexual assault to me."
The woman shrugged, bored. "Let's wait for the vaginal and anal swabs."
Behind him, someone sobbed. Sir Stephen Cartwright was holding his hands to his face. Next to him stood Alexander Mullins. The two men had plastic covers around their shoes and were swaddled in white protective overalls, just like Gabriel himself. Like ghosts, Gabriel thought. Ghosts visiting the dead.
Mullins's eyes were filled with rage. "You don't belong here, Gabriel, but I wanted you to see for yourself. You could have prevented this from happening."
Gabriel tried to speak but his throat was tight.
"First you lied. And then when you could have helped, you refused to slam the ride because you were feeling… petulant." Gabriel winced at the contempt in Mullins's voice.
"Get out." Mullins's voice shook. "Get out now."
Gabriel looked back at the body. A smell was seeping from it. Oxidized blood. Urine. Feces. He knew that smell was going to stay with him. It would leach into his memories.
Memories. With time they grew blurred. As though they had been stored on a disk that became corrupted, throwing up a treacherous density of fragmented code whenever you tried to access the data.
But some things you never forget.
Gabriel would always remember the look on Alexander Mullins's face the day he told the viewers at Eyestorm that they had been retained by Sir Stephen Cartwright to assist in solving his wife's kidnapping.
"Stephen and I are friends," Mullins said, his face for once animated. "This case is personal. We all need to work together." He turned his head deliberately toward Gabriel, and the young man knew what that look meant. Shape up. Fall in line. Be a team player.
Except that being a team player had never suited his MO. When you slammed a ride, it was just you and your target. There was no room for group hugs or inspirational chats. Huddling together with other RVs, sharing information, talking things over, opening up- was all wasted energy. Besides, Gabriel enjoyed pitting himself against his colleagues. He always won and didn't they just hate it.
Melissa Cartwright was a supermodel and her violet eyes had smiled from the pages of dozens of fashion magazines, at Gabriel and millions of others. A psychopath by the name of William Newts must have thought her smile was meant for him only. By the time Sir Stephen enlisted their help, his wife had been missing for three weeks and the media frenzy was intense.
Gabriel was excited. A success would be bound to impress Mullins.
The relationship between Gabriel and his mentor was bumpy. Gabriel knew Mullins admired his viewing skills, and the old man had once admitted that in his thirty years of studying remote viewers, he had never encountered an RV with greater ability. But Gabriel also knew Mullins considered him arrogant and a loose cannon, and his reluctance to work as part of a team was a continual bone of contention.
For his part, Gabriel thought Mullins overly cautious and sometimes outright punitive. Still, much as he hated to admit it to himself, he sought Mullins's respect in the way a son would seek approval from an emotionally reticent parent.
Maybe the Cartwright case would be a turning point. If he could bring Melissa home safely, the old man would be forever in his debt.
"What's wrong?" Frankie switched on the bedside light. The glow was feeble, leaving the corners of their tiny student apartment in shadow. Outside the window, the town of Oxford was asleep.
Gabriel sighed and plucked irritably at the bedsheet. "Nothing. Go back to sleep."
"No." Frankie pulled herself upright. "It is one o'clock in the morning and you're still awake. And I've had it with your bad temper. You've been impossible to live with for the past week. Tell me what's up!"
Gabriel stared at her sullenly.
"Gabriel, you and I are in a relationship. Re-la-tion-ship. That means you get to tell me what's bothering you and I get to listen and tell you it's OK and not to worry. And then maybe we can both go back to sleep and get some rest without you tossing and turning all night long and behaving like an ass the next morning."
If only it were that simple, he thought, looking at her flushed face. He suddenly felt close to despair.
"Gabriel?"
"The ride. I don't think I can do it anymore." He had difficulty uttering the words. His lips felt weirdly numb.
Frankie frowned. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm having trouble slamming the ride, Frankie. I think… I think, I may be losing the fire." Mullins had warned them. Remote viewers sometimes burned out and lost their gift. It happened to the best of them. Had it happened to him?
Frankie sighed impatiently. "Gabriel just because you struck out once-"
"Three times."
"-three times, does not mean you're losing it. You're just not seeing clearly yet."
"Frankie, I'm not seeing at all."
"But you identified three locations. You said you were sure. Alexander even called the police to check them out."
"I made it all up."
"What!"
"I… I just thought, if I could buy some time…"
Frankie's face was stiff with shock. The look in her eyes made him turn his head away. Every RV's work included speculation and conjecture, but it was of vital importance that a viewer should not embellish what he had accessed during the ride. Never pretend. Never lie. It was a mantra that had been drilled into their heads by Mullins during basic training. Gabriel had always kept the code. Until now.
The words tumbled from his lips. "I don't know what's going on. I can feel myself starting to cross over, the ride taking me. But then it stops. As though a door had been slammed in my face. Total block."
"You have to tell Alexander."
"No, not yet. It could still work, Frankie. I just need more time. I know I can work past the block somehow."
"If you won't tell him, then I will." Frankie's voice was implacable.
"You'll betray me like that?"
"For God's sake, this is not about you and me! A woman may die!"
The expression on her face made him flinch. "OK." He started pulling on his clothes. "OK. I'll go see him right now."
At the door he stopped and turned around. She was watching him and her hand was covering her mouth, giving her an alien, guarded look.
Frankie's reaction, however, was nothing compared to Mullins's rage.